


How They Settle

by fineandwittie



Series: The Timeline of a Love Story [3]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Angst, Character Development, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 07:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4820675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fineandwittie/pseuds/fineandwittie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaby knew that Napoleon had come to, if not accept her, than tolerate her. She could pinpoint when the change had happened, but she was certain that she had little or nothing to do with it.</p><p>Now she knows that she was right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There are two implied references to potential rape. In case anyone is particularly triggery.

Gaby notices a change in Solo, after the night she needed him to rescue her from her own drunken foolishness. Something seems to settle in him. His attitude toward her changes, slowly and in nearly infinitesimal increments. It’s months later, over a year since they first partnered together, that finally she looks up and his eyes are filled with humor. Genuine amusement and it’s directed at her, at some flippant comment she’s made. She’s never seen that expression in his eyes before, not directly. Normally, his eyes, beautiful though they are, are empty as a tomb, just as desolate and bitter when he looks at her. She takes a beat to appreciate how handsome the expression makes him look, those blue eyes light and wide enough that she can see the reddish-hazel mote in the left one.

When she sees this expression for the first time, she is startled. Solo doesn’t look at her like that, unless they’re in the field. She is always overwhelmed when they go on missions where she plays Solo’s fiancé or lover or wife or girlfriend. He is, as she told Illya that horrible morning at the cafe, the consummate professional and such a talented actor. On those missions, few and very far between though they are, his eyes are filled with love, adoration, desire, any manufactured emotion that is needed. He makes her feel as though she is the only woman in the world. He makes her feel as though there are millions of women in the world, but only she will ever catch his eye. It is a horrible thing. She wonders if he is imagining that she is someone else or if he is really that much of a cold-hearted bastard. 

When they are not on missions, Solo only ever looks at Illya with that much honestly, which is still only a fraction of the honesty that normal people wear every day of their lives.

She starts noticing other things, after that first time. Solo is freer with his smiles now and easier with his hands. He does not pay so much attention to keeping up the facade of mindless playboy. It slips when she least expects it. 

At dinner one night, she looks up and Solo is swirling the wine in his glass, looking for all the world like he’s waking up from a dream. She glances at Illya then, but he’s focused on his plate, eating one-handed. She frowns when she notices his other hand has disappeared below the table. 

One lazy afternoon, Illya and Solo play chess across the coffee table and she drapes herself over an armchair to watch. It’s a stunning thing to watch. Illya is obviously more technically skilled, but Solo plays chess with the same intense carelessness, the same focused nonchalance with which he goes after a mark or lies his way out of a tight spot. She imagines that this was how he stole art from museums and collectors alike. She muses on how intelligent he must be. He beats Illya handily and sits back smugly pleased with himself as Illya gapes at the chessboard.

One morning, she is alone with him, strolling along the Champs-Elysees arm-in-arm. Illya is surveilling their mark. They are playing lovers. It has been eighteen months since they were assigned to UNCLE. She looks up at Solo, wondering what he thinks about them, of Waverly, of UNCLE. Feeling brave in the early morning bloom of spring, she asks him. His lips curl up into a smile, but his eyes go flat. She swallows and wonders if she might have been better off had she never met any of them. “Waverly is very good at what he does. He’s deceptively mild-mannered, but he’s a shark when he needs to be. Which is good for us. UNCLE is useful and more just…more unbiased than any of the government intelligence agencies. As for us? We are…an effective team. We work well together. Before, I would have said that I work better alone. Now? I don’t. I work better with you and Illya, to watch my back or for me to watch yours. I don’t regret being taken by Waverly, even if it does prolong my…commitment to the CIA. For however long Waverly will keep us together.”

She blinks and considers this with a frown. “What do you mean ‘prolong your commitment to the CIA’? You have none. You’re UNCLE now.”

Solo laughs and it is a bitter thing, but for once, Gaby thinks that perhaps it is not directed at her. “Gaby, don’t be stupid. You’ve read my file, I’m sure.”

She frowns harder. “No. Why would I have read your file?”

Solo stops walking abruptly and turns to her, genuine shock on his face. He stares for a moment before exhaling a careful breath. He turns away from her to examine the outline of the Arc de Triomphe. “I sometimes forget how new you are to this Game. Gaby, the first thing you should have done was to steal our files from Waverly and read them both entirely. How you have managed to survive with either of us, without knowing our histories, is a testament to your own adaptability, I suppose. Christ. Alright.”

He turns back, grabs her hand, and pulls her over to sit down on an empty bench. She looks at him. He sighs. “I am not…with the CIA voluntarily. You know that I was…well, baldly, I was an art thief?”

She nods. Over the course of the time they’ve worked together, she has picked up that small bit of information, at least. Solo, in all things, plays it extraordinarily close to the vest.

“The CIA worked with MI6, the DGSE, and Interpol to catch me. It took them two years. The CIA made me an offer. I could go to prison for fifteen years or I could serve out my sentence by serving them. I’m not a small man, but I am…pretty…and I’ve not exactly been hardened by my life of crime. I did not like my odds in the prison they were planning to send me to. I took the deal. Illya once said that I was blackmailed into it. That I had my balls on a very long leash held by a very short man. He was not wrong. There is no doubt in my mind that that leash still exists and that playtime with you two is exactly that. We’ve been working on UNCLE for a year and a half now. Yet, I’m still five years from the end of my sentence. The best scenario I can hope for is to die in the field while still working for UNCLE… You need to get a hold of my file, of both our files, and read them. It could prove fatal in the field otherwise.” He snorts and some of the focus vanishes from his face. “You know basically nothing about me…Do you even know how many languages I speak?”

She shrugs, shame and anger mixing in her gut. He’s right, now that he’s pointed it out. “You speak Russian, because that is how you talk to Illya when you do not want me to hear. I am learning it, by the way, so you might want to switch languages soon. You speak Italian and German. You spoke fluent Spanish on that mission in Ecuador. And you speak French.”

He blinks and his eyes narrow. “You’ve never heard me speak French.”

She laughs, pleased to have surprised him. “No, but only someone who understands the language reacts to curses or obscenities like you do. I don’t know French, but I do know how to swear and that boy with the hubcap said something very rude, judging by the look on your face.”

Solo looks at her a moment longer, before laughing. It’s genuine and delighted. She’s never heard it before and it’s a beautiful sound, deep and throaty and wicked. She feels it low in her stomach and wonders if this is why Solo is the only one that Waverly gives honeytraps to. 

They are recalled to Britain when they finish in Paris and Gaby does as Solo instructed. His file is full of information and lies. She is hard pressed to tell them apart, but she knows for a fact that he is not a serial womanizer. Spending so much time in each other’s pockets, she knows that Solo uses sex like a weapon. He entraps with it, entices, establishes personas, but she has never seen him use it recreationally or intimately. 

She also knows about the French now, but apparently the CIA doesn’t. She muses over both files for days. Is surprised to realize that she knew most of what was in Illya’s already. Somehow, Illya always strikes people as the private one, the silent one. 

She finally decides to confront Solo about the patchwork of untruths that forms his file. She turns up at his apartment early, remembering Illya doing the same thing months and months ago. The door is not ajar, but it is not closed either. She pushes on it and it opens to an empty living room. She steps inside, scowl on her face and worry in her gut. 

The worry relaxes marginally when she hears the soft murmur of Russian coming from the kitchen. The scowl eases into a frown. Why would Solo be speaking Russian so early? 

She steps lightly to the kitchen doorway and the breath in her lungs is frozen at the sight.


	2. Chapter 2

Solo is bare-chested, wearing a bibbed apron over a pair of boxer shorts. He’s standing at the stove, a frying pan in one hand and a spatula in the other. He’s laughing and leaning back into Illya’s chest. Illya, in a pair of sleep pants and a t-shirt, is pressed right up against Solo’s back, arms wrapped around his waist and chin resting on the shorter man’s shoulder. Illya is smiling and he tilts his head to press a kiss to one bare shoulder. 

“Are you going to let me cook, моя любовь? Or are you going to hover all morning?”

Her hand flies to her mouth and Solo’s file goes crashing to the floor. The words were in English, but the endearment…Solo had called Illya ‘my love’. She recognized the phrase from several undercover missions. Both men tensed and Illya stepped back stiffly. Solo’s eyes were hard and filled with hatred now. She hadn’t seen the look in so very long. 

She now had an idea as to why Solo had hated her so much and what made him say such horrible things to her that long ago morning after Illya had fled.

She liked to think of herself as a progressive, modern woman. But this? She never suspected this. Wasn’t sure how she could handle this. She thought about Illya and his broken family and his uncontrollable rages and how very fragile human life was under his enormous hands. She thought about Solo and his oily smile that he only ever directs at women and his CIA handler who might still hold that leash and what he’d been afraid might happen in prison. She thought of the gentle kiss Illya placed on Solo’s skin and the joy in Solo’s laughter. моя любовь echoes through her head.

She knows that she loves Illya, who is so careful with her and so fiercely protective and sometimes looks like nothing more than an overgrown puppy. He is the brother that she never had. But, now? She realizes that she might like Solo too. Because she’d been wrong. He isn’t just a facade with a hollowing emptiness underneath. He’s broken and missing pieces, but he’s so vulnerable and has such capacity for kindness that sometimes it makes her heart hurt. 

She takes a deep breath. The two men wait for her to speak. “Well…that certainly explains a couple of things.” They blink at her and she offers them a tentative smile. “And when were you going to share this with me?”

Solo’s expression is blank. His nostrils flare. “Never. Why would you expect any different?”

She swallows, thickly, and prepares herself for this to all end spectacularly badly. “Because we’re a team and this is relevant. Because we’re a family and I love you both. Because I’m…Because this makes you happy and that’s all I really want for you. Both of you.”

And none of it is a lie. She isn’t going to say she’s happy for them. Because she’s not. Not yet. But she will be. She needs…to get used to this. She needs to understand. To see that they…love one another, that it’s good for them.

She’s never met a man who love other men before. Somehow, she is not surprised to find that Solo…Napoleon is one such man. Illya though? 

Napoleon’s face shutters. He still looks so very hostile, but Illya is gaping at her. “You…”

She inhales. “Look, I realize that you are both expecting condemnation. This…” She waves her hand vaguely at them. “is illegal in all of our countries. Though it was legal in mine for a while before Hitler came to power.* It is not…what people say it is. It is just…another way of living, I suppose. I have never met men like you before…or I did not know it. It…It is surprising and it will take me some time to get used to it, I think. But…you called him любовь…love. This is not just some…small thing. It is not inconsequential to either of you. You are in love. Yes?”

Illya turns to look at Napoleon, fragile longing in his eyes and desperation in every line of his body. Napoleon, for his part, glances at Illya before closing his eyes. The shuttered blankness is gone. His face is raw, open in a way that Gaby does not like at all, is sorry for causing. He is silent for a moment. Illya swallowed painfully and drops his eyes to the floor. 

“Yes.” It’s a whisper and sounds as though it was torn from the depths of Napoleon’s soul. He curls in on himself. “Yes, I am in love with Illya. It’s…nothing I have ever experienced before in my life and I…I’m not ashamed of it.”

Napoleon’s use of Illya’s real name, instead of a nickname or an endearment, makes the entire situation real, immediate, in a way that Gaby can’t quite understand. 

She blinks back tears at the sheer, uninhibited joy on Illya’s face. He turns back to her. “Da. I am very much in love with Napoleon.”

Napoleon’s throat clicks when he swallows and he makes a wounded sort of whine in the back of his throat. They are in each other’s arms between one blink and the next. If pressed, Gaby could not have said who moved first. 

She stares as they cling to one another. She isn’t sure what she’s supposed to be doing, so she stands and watches. She thinks perhaps, for all his height and easy rage, Illya is the submissive one in their relationship. She would say he is the woman, but that designation is obviously stupid, since they’re both men. And Napoleon is wearing a lace trimmed apron. She hopes vaguely that that was a gag gift from someone, because that would be one fact about Napoleon Solo that she didn’t need to know.

Unbidden, images of Napoleon in lace float through her mind and she flushes hard. He’d wear black lace to contrast with his skin tone, or red lace to catch the eye and accentuate what the material hid. She can see, in her mind’s eye, the heavy bulk of his cock tucked into a tiny pair of women’s panties…her own panties. She imagines Illya’s hand splaying across Napoleon’s bare stomach, little finger just brushing the material. She blinks and forcibly pushes the image away. They belong to each other and are none of hers. She has no right to imagine such things.

When she focuses again, the two men have pulled apart and are turning to look at her again. She nods once. “Good. That’s that then. I…” She’s suddenly at a loss. She’s going to have to go back to her apartment and pick apart her own emotional response to this, because it is in no way as solid or uncomplicated as she’s presenting it to them. But their trust is more important than her own emotional state at the moment and she can’t leave. She can’t…make a statement like that and just go. She wants them to understand that she is telling the truth even if she is lying. She holds her breath and tries to think of something to say.

Napoleon examines her for a moment and then smiles. It reaches his eyes and is made from easy warmth, acceptance, affection. Her lips part. She glances over to find the same expression on Illya’s face.

Napoleon turns back to the stove, murmuring, “Why don’t you stay for breakfast, Gaby? You can ask me whatever questions my file generated and then we can all get dressed and go into work together.”

She exhales.

They’re going to fine. Just fine. No matter how long it takes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *This is true. I read a paper about the Queer community in Germany in the pre-Nazi years. it's really interesting story. 
> 
>  
> 
> Writing Gaby's reaction was hard for me. I hope it reads okay.


End file.
